Chapter 80: The Whole Family Gathers!

Ethan stood at the door to his own apartment, but it felt like the entrance to another world. He raised a trembling hand and knocked gently. The sound seemed impossibly loud in the sudden silence that followed. From inside, the muffled sound of his mother's crying abruptly stopped.

"Who is it?" a hoarse, broken voice called from within. It was his mother, Sarah, but he barely recognized the sound.

Ethan took a deep, shuddering breath and answered softly, his own voice cracking, "Mom… it's me. I'm back."

Before his words had even faded, he heard a frantic scrambling from inside the room. Then, the large door was pulled open with a violent "creak." Sarah stood in the doorway, her eyes wide and red-rimmed, her face a mess of tears. Her body trembled, and her lips moved slightly, as if she wanted to say a thousand things at once, but she couldn't make a single sound. She reached out a shaking hand and cautiously, almost fearfully, touched Ethan's cheek, as if to confirm that the person standing in front of her was real. Her eyes were filled with a profound doubt and a deep, gnawing unease, terrified that this was just a dream, another cruel trick of her grief-stricken mind.

Then, confirming he was solid, that he was real, she could no longer suppress the storm of emotions in her heart. She collapsed against him, hugging him tightly, her body trembling violently as tears streamed down her face uncontrollably. "My baby! You're finally back! You scared me to death!" she cried, her voice revealing an abyss of endless worry and terror.

Ethan also hugged his mother tightly, burying his face in her shoulder, the familiar scent of home a soothing balm on his frayed soul. "Relax, Mom," he comforted her, his own voice thick with emotion. "I'm fine. I'm okay. Haven't I come back perfectly fine now?" He gently patted his mother's back, trying to calm her down, trying to convince himself as much as her.

Simon, standing just behind her, asked anxiously, his face pale and drawn, "Ethan, those beasts… the cultists… they didn't do anything to you, did they? Why did they capture you?" His eyes were full of a father's fierce concern and a simmering, helpless anger.

Ethan recalled the script he had carefully thought up in the car on the way back. He pulled away from his mother slightly, forcing a relaxed and slightly playful tone into his voice. "Those little ants? How could they possibly harm me? The reason they captured me was that they saw my amazing psionic ability and wanted me to join their ridiculous cult. But I was too smart for them. I pretended to agree, fought with them to the end, and even at the most critical moment, I had a sudden breakthrough in my rank, successfully buying precious time until the Mayor and the General came to rescue me."

After saying this, Ethan was even a little proud of his performance. It was clear that he had completely fooled himself into believing his own heroic, sanitized tale.

"They forced you!" Simon said, his knuckles white. "Then did they… did they use any torture on you?"

"No, not really. Um... if you have to say, not giving me anything to eat or drink for three days, does that count?"

"What!" Sarah cried out, her motherly instincts overriding her grief. "Those bastards didn't even give you anything to eat for three whole days! Aiya, Ethan, you must be starving. Come, come inside! Mom will go cook for you right now." Sarah hurriedly ran towards the kitchen, her new purpose to feed her son eclipsing everything else, afraid that he was desperately hungry.

"Alright, alright, son, don't just stand at the door," Simon said, ushering him in. After Ethan sat down on the sofa, Simon quickly poured him a glass of water. "Drink up!"

"Um... okay, thanks." Just as he picked up the water glass and was about to drink, the powerful, throaty roar of a high-performance engine suddenly sounded from outside on the street below. Ethan opened the window and saw a very dazzling, dark blue sports car parked outside their building. That car looked expensive just by looking at it, a machine of impossible wealth and power for a neighborhood like theirs.

"Which big shot is this?" he wondered aloud. "To come to our place."

Simon, looking out, said, "Could it be… your uncle and aunt have finally arrived?"

"What the heck!" Ethan stared as the car doors opened. Two men and three women got out. Two of the men and one of the women looked to be in their late forties or fifties, radiating a quiet power and grace. The other two women were younger, and one of them was, of course, his aunt Lily. He recognized her at a glance. But the other four people also looked very, unnervingly, familiar to Ethan. After looking at them for a couple more seconds, he finally recognized them.

"This, this, this!" Ethan even stammered a little. Weren't those his paternal aunt and uncle, Clara and Steven, and his paternal grandparents, Eleanor and Arthur? Why had they become so… young? Not to mention his grandparents, who in his memories were in their sixties or seventies, their figures even a little stooped from a lifetime of hard work. But now they actually looked like vibrant middle-aged people. His uncle and aunt had directly transformed from what should have been middle-aged people into what looked like young adults in their late twenties or early thirties. His own father, Simon, was clearly the same age as his uncle, Steven, but his father already had deep wrinkles etched around his eyes, and his skin was also very rough. But those two people, one was handsome and heroic, the other was as beautiful as a flower that could eclipse the moon. Where was there any hint of a middle-aged person about them?

This almost made Ethan's jaw drop to the floor. His aunt, Clara Atherton, raised her head and, seeing Ethan in the window, had a face full of relieved doubt. Clara patted the shoulder of Steven Atherton beside her, pointing up at Ethan to indicate for him to look. Steven looked at Ethan standing there, and was also a little surprised and confused.

"Didn't they say Ethan was captured?" Steven said to his wife. "Isn't he right here, perfectly fine?"

"He must have been found," Clara replied, her voice filled with relief. "Let's hurry up and go up."

Lily, with a flash of her body that was faster than the eye could follow, appeared like a ghost at the apartment window, phasing through it. She grabbed Ethan's body and looked him up and down with an intense, analytical gaze. "You're completely fine. This is impossible."

Ethan just stared at her. "...No... Sis Lily, what do you mean by that? Are you actually looking forward to something happening to me?"

Lily hurriedly waved her hand. "No, no, that's not it at all. It's mainly that I heard you were captured by the people of the Evolution Cult. And now, not only have you escaped, but you're also completely unharmed. This doesn't quite fit the usual style of those people. At the very least, a part of your body should have been gruesomely modified into that of a monster."

Ethan thought, Hehe, what do you mean a part of my body? My entire person was modified into a monster, okay? "I'll explain this to you later," he said aloud. "Anyway, I'm fine now."

After a while, Clara and Steven, as well as Ethan's grandparents, Arthur and Eleanor Atherton, also came up. The two elders, upon seeing Ethan, excitedly pulled him into a tight embrace. "Aiya, my precious grandson," his grandmother Eleanor cried, "I've missed you so much after not seeing you for so long. You must have suffered terribly during this period, right?"

"Grandma, I'm fine," Ethan reassured her. "My body is in great shape, relax."

His grandfather, Arthur, said, his voice a low growl, "You brat, if you were wronged, you tell your grandpa. Grandpa will have your uncle and aunt spend whatever it takes to hire a team of mercenaries and bring that whole group of bastards to me!" Although he had been a simple farmer his whole life, his body, now revitalized by psionics, exuded a fierce aura. It was clear that he was truly, deeply angry.

"Relax, Grandpa," Ethan said. "They're all dead already. Not a single one was left."

"That's good then."

"Dad, Mom, don't just stand outside," Simon said. "Hurry up and come in." Simon hurriedly invited everyone in. Sarah had also turned off the fire and came forward to welcome them. "I thought you would need some more time to get here. I didn't expect you to come so quickly."

"How could we not be anxious?" Clara said, hugging her sister-in-law. "As soon as we heard that Ethan was captured by that group from the Evolution Cult, Mom and Dad were so anxious they had us buy plane tickets to come back overnight. The tickets we bought were for a special express charter; even so, it still took three full days to get here."

This world was different from the previous one. There was no such thing as a commercial flight every day between cities. If you wanted to travel to another city by air, you had to charter a private plane, which was astronomically expensive. What is a chartered plane ticket? It means that if you want to go to a specific city, you need to spend a fixed, exorbitant fee. If you are one person, you bear that entire cost alone. If you are several people, then you share the cost. On the way there, besides the pilot and co-pilot, there would only be you. There wouldn't even be any flight attendants. And that was just the price for the trip there; the price for the return trip was another separate fee you had to pay. Even if you decided to stay in that city and not leave, you still had to pay this return fee. And the plane would, at most, wait for you in that place for three days. After three days, it would return to its home base. If you missed it then, you could only hope to buy another plane ticket back, whenever the next charter became available. And the plane ticket fee was extremely high, not something an ordinary person could ever afford.